Spirits and the Golden Order in Elden Ring

 The world of Elden Ring is haunted by disembodied spirits.

It's actually nuts: our horse (a horned horse, which is actually a detail whose significance only occurred to me just now) is a spirit that manifests when we blow on our ring-whistle. Melina is burned in body, with only her spirit able to meet us at Sites of Grace. We have summoned spirits via their Spirit Ash. Ghostly spirits are everywhere, even before you get to the Land of Shadow, where most of the Hornsent are shadowy spirits, slain in Messmer's crusade.

And then, the Erdtree is also a spirit.

It's never stated explicitly, but there is a lot of implication across the game that at some point in the past, the Erdtree burned to ash, and that the version we see towering over the Lands Between is, effectively, its ghost. Some NPCs ask if we see the Erdtree, which would be a ludicrous question if it were still a physical object, glowing brighter than the sun. However, it's implied that to see the Erdtree, one must also see the Guidance of Grace, and that is not something that everyone is capable of doing.

Now, it's not a perfect theory: in support of it is that Leyndell is already covered in ash, with alleys and backstreets mostly buried. Why, then, after we are the ones to burn it with either Melina's help or with the Frenzied Flame, is there significantly more ash, such that nearly the entire city is buried beneath?

(As a side note, something occurred to me: In Alchemical tradition, there's a stage in the Magnum Opus called the Rubedo, in which the sun turns red, which red also representing the highest of the elements, fire. In Elden Ring, the Erdtree has kind of usurped the role of the sun as the source of light, with a past "Sun Realm" era long fallen away. When we burn it, the tree still stands, but it is consumed with a deep red flame. Is this the Rubedo of our grand alchemical work to transform the world?)

Marika's reign can be roughly divided into two eras, one with Godfrey as her Elden Lord and one with Radagon. Notably, it seems that with Godfrey, Marika was kind of tied more to the physical world. Her sacred rite was to collect the sap of the Erdtree for people to, I assume, drink. Godfrey, being tied more to nature via the Crucible and his old barbarian ways, was thus paired with this more kind of nature/fertility goddess whose blessings were tangible nourishment.

With Radagon, however, the religion of the Golden Order became far more abstract and conceptual. Radagon promoted a more scholarly understanding of the Golden Order, existing beyond the realm of the physical and into the metaphysical. You can even see how the older Erdtree holy symbols were organic, making use of tree imagery, while the Golden Order Fundamentalist symbols are more geometric and less representational.

What if Radagon's influence on the Golden Order was a reaction to some catastrophe? What if it was the destruction of the Erdtree, the centerpiece to Marika's religious order, and the very boon that she granted to people that legitimized her as a god, required a radical redefinition about what faith in Marika actually meant.

Now, where within all of this the Night of Black Knives, the removal of the Rune of Death, the Shattering all take place is something I can't really say for certain (I've generally assumed the Shattering was a reaction to the Night of Black Knives, but that means it'd have to have been after the removal of the Rune of Death because the Black Knife Assassins needed that rune to do what they did... I think? Boy, what does it even mean for Maliketh to be guarding the rune in Farum Azula when bits of it are in Ranni and Godwyn's bodies?)

I'd argued earlier that Melina's total lack of fear in being the kindling for the Erdtree might actually be because her spirit won't be destroyed if she does so. It's not the Flame of Frenzy. Though, what's weird is that in the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending, Melina does appear, looking like he hair is singed by the fire, and seems to physically exist, which is... boy not even sure what to do with that.

Marika went on a war to conquer the Lands Between while Godfrey was her lord, and I believe the final battle was agains the Fire Giants, which led to a massacre not unlike that of the Hornsent.

Marika's animosity toward the Hornsent isn't hard to understand, given what was done to her people (and I think probably done to her as well - I think she's the "successful" Jar-Saint that the Hornsent were trying to make, and I guess it didn't occur to them that doing so would make an incredibly powerful individual who would hate you with a burning passion).

And you know what, this might also kind of explain her attitude toward death. The Hornsent were obsessed with spirits - with ghosts - and Marika built her entire Golden Order around the idea that no one would permanently die. You die, your body and soul are recycled through the Erdtree, returning to life as a real, living, breathing person, not some ghostly spirit.

But that's no longer possible when the Erdtree is, itself, a ghost.

It's interesting, because I think Radagon's transformation of the Golden Order is an allegory for the development of religious thought in human culture. Theologians over the past couple thousand years have described far more sophisticated and complex and, well, less grounded ideas that are dervied from ancient religions. I don't mean to say that ancient people weren't sophisticated, but there's a kind of rabbit hole of subtle distinctions that lead people into holy wars with one another, or having people executed for heresy, where if you're not well-versed in the intricacies of the theology, you might be confused as to why these people are even in conflict.

In other words, this kind of sophistication isn't necessarily progressive, and I think it's pretty strongly implied that the Golden Order under Godfrey was probably a lot better to live under than it was under Radagon (though maybe not so great for the people in the process of being conquered - like... better, but not necessarily good).

It's ironic, though, that Marika sought to build a world grounded in the physical reality, the familiar, living world, but her Order was then turned into this cerebral, abstract thing.

Is this the reason she decided to tear it all down?

Marika's motivations are one of the biggest enigmas in the game. While Melina is able to quote her at various churches, we never actually hear her or Radagon speak (let's just set aside the question of whether Radagon was ever his own fully independent person or not, or if he was always just Marika's male aspect).

When we make it to the interior of the Erdtree (which I didn't clock until someone online pointed it out, but we actually seem to start there in the opening cutscene before showing up at the Chapel of Anticipation) we see Marika crucified on a Rune Arc, with a massive lance the red color of the Rune of Death impaling her (very Spear of Longinus-coded).

Who did this to her? Truly, I have no clue. I doubt it was Radagon, as this imprisoned him just as much as it imprisoned her.

Still, I think that there's this interesting tension: the Fundamentalist version of the Golden Order might be totally antithetical to her original vision. But then, it also seems that she and Radagon, despite sharing the same body, are also at odds with one another.

Last little note:

Given these affiliations, it might be ironic, then, that Marika's Scarseal and Soreseal boost "mental" stats like Intelligence, Faith, and Mind, while Radagon's Scarseal and Soreseal boost physical stats like Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance, as you'd think they would be opposites. Maybe, and this is kind of a shot in the dark, but maybe it's that these are the qualities that they lack, rather than what they posses and grant?

Very Vague Rumors of a Second Elden Ring DLC

 Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was enormous: while the Land of Shadow certainly wasn't as large as The Lands Between, it was nonetheless a huge region with basically an entire Dark Souls' worth of stuff, sending us into iconic fights with Messmer and a resurrected Radahn and Miquella, as well as really fantastic side content like our exploration of the Abyssal Woods that led to Midra, or Metyr, the Mother of Fingers. (And who could forget Igon's howling fury at Bayle the Dread?)

What I think a lot of players were surprised by, though, was the lack of closure for the story of Godwyn, the first of the demigods to die, slain in soul while his body has continued to live. Godwyn is something of the Baldur of Elden Ring's pantheon, beloved by all (it seems) and whose death triggered The Shattering.

Let's do a summary here:

Godwyn is (though to be) the son of Marika and Godfrey (first Elden Lord and also first of the Tarnished, whom we defeat en route to the final fight against Radagon in the base game). It's likely he was the firstborn, and while Marika's whole Golden Order is built around the notion that she's eternal, in a more traditional monarchic system, Godwyn would have been the clear heir apparent. Godwyn defeated and befriended the dragons, ushering in the establishment of the Dragon Cult within Marika's Golden Order (Cult here in the more traditional term, as a kind of narrower religious movement that is accepted by the larger church but not adhered to by all. I think technically by this definition, a monastic order like the Franciscans would count. In polytheistic traditions, it would be like people who dedicated themselves particularly to, like, Athena, while still worshipping the other Olympians).

Godwyn is thought to have been a kind older brother to Malenia and Miquella. He also, presumably, had children of his own, as it seems that the various characters with "God" as a prefix to their names (subtle, right?) were all part of The Golden Lineage. Unfortunately, this eventually led to Godefroy (a minor Evergaol boss) and Godrick the Grafted, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the Elden Ring, though how direct his descent from Godwyn was is questionable (Nepheli Loux, interestingly, is probably a direct descendant if not the daughter of Godfrey, whose actual name is Hoarah Loux, meaning she's probably got a more legitimate claim as heir to Godfrey specifically, even if she's not descended from Marika).

Anyway, Godwyn was the golden child, but on the Night of Black Knives, he was ambushed and slain by the Black Knife Assassins. In a simultaneous act, the cursemark of death was inscribed in his flesh while the other half of it was inscribed on Lunar Princess Ranni's body. Ranni's soul survived but her body died, while Godwyn's soul was killed and his body left alive.

It's not clear if this was evident to start with, because Godwyn's remains were given Erdtree Burial down in the Deeproot Depths. Perhaps because his body lived on without its soul, this created a corruption that now spreads across the Lands Between - Deathroot, which leads to the rise of Those Who Live in Death - more or less Elden Ring's version of the undead (though interestingly, some item descriptions describe the various "nobles" found on the road as undead. Likewise, the Tarnished are described as "Those who Died Yet Live." Unlike the Tarnished, Those Who Live in Death are rotting and decayed, sometimes skeletal.

Godwyn is now considered the Prince of Death, and Fia's questline, where she serves her role as a Deathbed Companion, has her ultimately lay with the Prince to create the Mending Rune of the Death Prince, which gives us the Age of the Duskborn ending.

There are a few things that I find really interesting surrounding Godwyn.

Among the Golden Order Fundamentalists, there are some who hunt Those Who Live in Death, who find their existence to be an affront to the Golden Order, such as D, Hunter of the Dead. Fundamentalist incantations require equal parts Faith and Intelligence, and their dedicated Seal scales with both in equal measures. Many of these have special effects against Those Who Live in Death, preventing them from rising again once struck down the first time.

Ironically, Death Sorceries work the same way, requiring a mix of Intelligence and Faith, and again, their dedicated staff, the Prince of Death's Staff, scales equally with both.

Anyway, Deathroot is said to hold fragments of the Rune of Death, which is why Gurranq (aka Maliketh) has us gather it for him in his attempt to reconstitute it and keep it under lock (supposedly there's an old bit of folkore that dogs can purify dead things by eating them, which might have inspired this).

Godwyn's form is utterly bizarre - his face has transformed into something that almost looks like a scallop shell, and his lower half is that of a fish.

Now... the interesting thing is that we never actually see him before the moment he's assassinated, and when he is, he's being held up by his elbows much in the way that he's posed in death, and he's lower than the assassins. Is it possible that he always had a merman-like form? Certainly Marika's disdain for her Omen twin sons, Mohg and Morgott, with their omen horns (which marked them actually as Hornsent, who would have been considered blessed in an earlier age) would have abhorred Godwyn's exhibition of aspects of the Crucible, where people manifest animal-like features (including horns?)

Perhaps, or perhaps not: after all, Marika hated the Hornsent, which were specifically all about horns. But given that Godfrey drew power from the Crucible (even if he himself is fully human in form) maybe it wasn't even that much of a shock if Godwyn was born with that fishy lower half, and maybe it was acceptable?

Otherwise, there's a possibility that the fish tail was a result of his corruption by Death. There is a lot of aquatic imagery related to death as a power, such as the Tibia Mariners. Perhaps the abyssal depths of the ocean are tied to death, and so the Prince of Death would naturally take on a form more at home int he deep waters?

The strange thing is that Godwyn's presence is pretty thin in The Land of Shadow. The Land of Shadow holds a pillar where it is said that "all manner of death converge." The Suppressing Pillar seems like it was probably made on Marika's orders, given that, as a god who sought to embody abundant life, she loathed death in all of its forms. The Land of Shadows is, in many ways, the Land of the Dead.

Godwyn has a presence there, but it's not as extensive as you'd expect it to be.

There are three catacomb dungeons in The Land of Shadow. These are far larger than the ones in the base game, with multiple levels to descend. In each, you can find one of Godwyn's loyal knights, the Death Knights, who employ his golden draconic lighting magic. (Two are the dungeons' final bosses, while one is found dead there, and you can get their cool armor set, while the final boss is actually outside the catacombs and leads into the Abyssal Woods).

In either one or two of these (I can't remember,) there is a massive Godwyn face similar to the one we find in the depths of Stormveil Castle.

We know that Godwyn's body is growing, cancer-like, across the Lands Between. It's truly some of the most unnerving imagery in the game, with root-like structures manifesting eyes, and showing up even on some creatures (like the crabs in the moat outside of Leyndell where we fight Dung Eater or the various Basilisks).

Thus, these huge facsimiles of him might just be particularly advanced growths. But their presence in the Land of Shadow implies that the Deathroot does reach there somehow (hell, it even shows up in Farum Azula, which raises some really interesting questions about when the city flew up into the sky). I believe, though, that one of the odd details about the Shadowlands Catacombs is that, other than these massive faces, you don't actually see the Deathroot threaded through them like you do in the base game.

When the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was announced, many players were convinced that we'd finally have our big fight against an undead Godwyn the Golden, and so a lot of people were kind of shocked and even disappointed that we were having a kind of rematch with Radahn as its big final boss fight.

Here's the thing: FromSoft tends to zig when you expect them to zag - Shadow of the Erdtree's marketing was focused a ton of Messmer, who is a memorable boss to be sure, but also kind of a supporting player in the real drama of the expansion. Similarly, Artorias of the Abyss was the headliner for the DLC that shared his name, but the actual final boss of that was Manus.

In other words, if we do get a second DLC, if they put Godwyn front-and-center, I would say the chances are very high that he'll be an important boss on the way to the actual final boss. If he's barely referenced, though, I think there's a fair chance.

All this being said: at this point, do we want more DLC for Elden Ring? Or would we want an Elden Ring 2? I know that Dark Souls III was kind of all about how dragging a series out for multiple sequels leads to diminishing returns. But Elden Ring's world is so profoundly dense with lore, even more, I'd wager, than that of Dark Souls.

I wouldn't be upset at all about getting an Elden Ring II (Roman numerals seem more appropriate for the series). At the same time, I suspect that the focus would be more on new elements, with a ton of new characters and taking place probably thousands of years after the first game. Of course, a figure like Godwyn is sure to still be around in thousands of years. How might the Deathroot have evolved in that time?

To be clear, all this speculation is based on a social media post that simply referred to the beauty of riding around on the Siofra River, but it kind of came out of nowhere.

What Might an Elden Ring Sequel Be About?

 I'll concede immediately that the premise of the title of this post is flawed. Arguably, Elden Ring has a sequel, with Nightreign.

While I've been doing my best to follow the lore of Nightreign as best as I can, I have a certain allergy to live-service style games - I play WoW, which is kind of the exception that proves the rule, as I don't want to get sucked into the weaponized FOMO that such models of gaming use to keep you stuck with them (WoW got its hooks into me twenty years ago, when such models were far rarer).

Still, I'm also given to understand that Nightreign is sort of apocryphal - imagining an alternate timeline for the Lands Between. The lore that it explores - again, as I understand it - is less about fleshing out more about Elden Ring's lore, but more about exploring the individual characters' stories within that lore.

Naturally, this is all up for debate - the nature of FromSoft lore tends to be that any aspect of the lore is open to interpretation, to the extent that sometimes I wonder if they put references to lore that intentionally contradicts itself: for instance, I wonder if the Nox and the Shamans are both off-shoots of the Numen, or if Marika's past as a shaman is actually inconsistent with her being a Numen.

I think one could potentially read Nightreign as what would happen with Ranni's Rain of Stars ending, which has apparently been the most popular ending people have gone for when playing Elden Ring (the fact that it's the one with the most involved quest chain does help it feel like the "truest" ending). But maybe not.

Let me make this clear: Elden Ring's lore is my favorite FromSoft has given us. I like it better than the lore of Dark Souls and Demon Souls, and even though I adore Bloodborne, I think I like Elden Ring's lore better.

Now, that might be in part because I got on at the ground floor with Elden Ring, playing it only a month or so after it came out (the only reason I delayed was because I thought I could only buy either the PS4 or PS5 version, and hoped to upgrade my console, but then realized I could get it for both as a single purchase). I never beat Dark Souls, getting stuck on Ornstein and Smough (I got much farther in DSIII, only leaving Midir, Gael, and Soul of Cinder - the latter out of fear that it'd lock me into NG+ if I beat it).

But having played Dark Souls III, I wonder if there's a message there about sequels. DSIII is a game I read as an allegory for franchises and sequels losing their potency over time. The world has constantly been refreshed and rebooted as countless Lords of Cinder have reignited the First Flame, and you can feel the entire world straining under the ashes of an Age of Fire prolonged far, far beyond its intended period. Even the first game shows a world struggling with stagnation due to Gwyn's linking of the fire, but while that game perhaps leaves open some interpretation that following in his footsteps might at least grant the world some good times once again, the final game truly makes the linking of the flame feel futile.

Both Dark Souls and Elden Ring are about the dangers of stagnation, of trying to keep a good thing going past its time. That being said, I don't know that Elden Ring is as primarily concerned with stagnation as a natural inevitability.

The truth is that there's so little we know for certain about how Marika's age turned sour. Shadow of the Erdtree suggests that the seeds of its downfall were there from the beginning, the madness of Metyr and her Two Fingers setting things on a catastrophic course, and the cycle of hatred and violence and revenge making freedom-fighters into tyrants.

Still, my reading is that the most important event in the timeline that is never addressed directly is when the Erdtree burns down the first time. That might surprise you if you hadn't heard this argument before, but basically, Leyndell is already filled with ash when we get there, and the tree we see looks more like a ghostly spirit than a physical organism made of wood. There are references to Marika distributing the Erdtree's sap as a blessing in some earlier age of abundance, but with the tree in its incorporeal state, its tangible, direct benefits have literally dried up, making the world's devotion to Marika an article of faith alone.

I suspect this is also what precipitates Godfrey's exile and his replacement by Radagon, which would neatly tie the two Elden Lords to their respective eras.

If we assume that the player is a completionist, finishing both the base game and the DLC and defeating every boss, we can probably check off most of the key figures of Elden Ring's pantheon. Miquella is dead. Radahn is dead twice over. Mohg is dead. Morgott is dead. The last of the Fire Giants is dead. Placidusax is dead.

But who is still alive?

Well, Ranni, at least in her doll body, is still alive. Even if we don't go for the Age of Stars ending, I don't believe there's any way to kill her.

Marika might still be alive. If you get either of the two special endings, the Lord of Frenzied Flame or the Age of Stars, she seems to pass away (more peacefully in the latter). But if you use any of the Mending Rune endings, or the Age of Fracture, Marika is presumably still a god and still the vessel of the Elden Ring, though likely bereft of agency similarly to how she is when we find her.

Interestingly, though, I wonder if, even if Marika persists, if Radagon is dead. His body becomes the sword wielded by the Elden Beast, and we don't see it change back. But his body is Marika's body, so... It's not clear.

Rykard is dead... probably. Arguably, he was dead before the game started when he fed himself to the God-Devouring Serpent, but that allowed him to become a part of it, and a rather dominant part of it. We see Lady Tannith eating what remains of him in an act that I imagine is meant to allow him to live on within her. As Rykard says, "a serpent never dies," which is actually a weird thing to say because serpents for sure die in the real world. But the God-Devouring Serpent is, I'd guess, linked to the idea of an Ouroboros, the snake devouring itself that symbolically represents eternity. I suspect that Rykard's dominance of the serpent's will might be over, the the serpent itself is probably still around in some form (I wouldn't be shocked if Tannith transformed after consuming it. We can kill her for some special loot while she's doing this, and fight off her Crucible Knight bodyguard, but I'm not as convinced that that event would be treated as canonical).

Malenia is also an interesting story: the hardest "superboss" in the base game (I haven't gone back to fight her again, but boy after fighting Consort Radahn, I suspect she'd feel easier,) there also seems to be some implication that she's not truly dead, with the Aeonian bloom she leaves behind perhaps giving her a path to rebirth. (How literal should we take it that her second phase calls her the Goddess of Rot? We don't get a "God Slain" victory toast when she falls, but is that because we haven't actually killed the goddess?)

Melina is also in an interestingly ambiguous position. Ironically, despite the state of the world in it, the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending quite emphatically portrays Melina as alive, because she's on her way to put you down. (Is she the Gloam-Eyed Queen? Possibly, but I had some other theories about how she got that indigo eye). However, if we don't have the Frenzied Flame, she uses herself as kindling to burn the Erdtree, seemingly perishing in this conflagration.

(I've never tried this, but if we want to be cheeky, I think we can have her burn herself to burn the Erdree and then get the Flame of Frenzy, which I believe removes the stinger on the end of the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending.)

Still, I'm not even convinced that Melina is actually dead even if she does burn herself. Again, there's strong evidence that the Erdtree burned once before, when it was still a physical tree that granted tangible sap. I think it's very possible that Melina already performed this role once, which might be why she's so emphatic about not worrying ourselves about the role she has to play. The Flame of Ruin that she is kindling is not the spirit-burning Frenzied Flame, after all, so maybe she's literally fine (though we never see her again after she kindles the flame). Sure, if she were around, she ought to still be around to threaten the Lord of Frenzied Flame, so... Hm.

(If we're considering a full clear canon, we might imagine that the Tarnished does save her by using the Frenzied Flame but then uses Miquella's Needle to cleanse themself, leaving her pissed off that they did something so dangerous but without the need to slay them.)

Rellana's alive - a character that I think we are truly unable to kill, even though we fight her in a boss fight. While she's in a sadly pathetic state of mind, one wonders if Radagon's defeat might break her out of her funk, and if Ranni has truly ascended to godhood, I could imagine one of the first items on her agenda would be to restore her mother to her former state of glory (though we should also probably expect Ranni to be a distant and non-interventionist deity).

Friendly NPCs that survive the game are somewhat few in number. Kenneth Haight and Nepehli Loux are still around, now presiding over Limgrave (along with Gatekeeper Gostoc). Jarbairn is still there in Jarburg with the surviving Warrior Jars. Boc the Seamster survives if you convince him not to undergo a rebirth ritual. Selen is... kinda sorta alive if you complete her quest and side with her, though if you go against her, I believe Witch-Hunter Jerren survives as well. Other than a whole bunch of merchants, though, that... uh, that might be everyone. (Oh! Sage Gowry as well, whatever the hell he is.)

Of course, listing the surviving NPCs is hardly going to tell us whether you could make a sequel. If there was one, it might be ages later, and the NPCs that we know might be long dead, even just of age (assuming that the end of Marika's age means that that happens now).

The question is what threads could be picked up.

Godwyn feels like a huge dangling thread. Many assumed the DLC was going to focus on him (though had it done so, I feel that there would be an equal if not greater contingent wondering what was going on with Miquella). While his horrifyingly distorted body is kind of just a stationary object, it is his soul that is said to be dead, while his body yet lives.

What... uh, what does that mean? Is that what it means to "live in death?" Is soulless life what the Deathroot is and spreads?

Perhaps I'm conflating the works of George R. R. Martin too much, but I feel like Godwyn plays a similar role to Rhaegar from A Song of Ice and Fire. Rhaegar comes off as the most ideally heroic would-be protagonist of the series, only he died like fifteen years before the books start. Like Rhaegar, Godwyn seemed to be an honorable man, turning the dragons from enemies into allies, and was seemingly universally beloved. His diplomacy with the dragons and his horrific assassination with the curse that spread from it, but also his apparent offspring and lineage, mean that Godwyn touches a ton of the lore for a posthumous character.

It always seemed he ought to have some greater presence in the lore, and that he deserved some time in the spotlight.

Of course, the other figure utterly shrouded in mystery is the Gloam-Eyed Queen, only ever mentioned in item descriptions and never mentioned (to my knowledge) by NPCs. The GEQ is the ultimate "center of the conspiracy corkboard" figure (I believe Gwyn's banished son held a similar place until we fought him as the Nameless King in DSIII - kind of the Malenia of that game). Said to have been "defeated" but not explicitly slain, From's got the narrative elbow room to have her show up if they want.

Another figure who remains mysterious but I think gets far less discussion is Renna, the Snow Witch who mentored Ranni, and whose appearance the doll is based on. Given the structure of her name, it would not be unlikely to find that Renna was a Carian, perhaps the mother of Rellana and Rennala and thus Ranni's grandmother. Or, perhaps, given that her tower is one of the Three Sisters, perhaps she is Ranni's aunt, and sister to Rellana and Rennala.

Hell, she could be the Gloam-Eyed Queen.

The truth is that an Elden Ring sequel could introduce a lot of its own new lore. We have seen some interesting new ideas brought forth in Nightreign, especially with the Forsaken Hollows DLC giving us the Balancers and the Dreglord. Again, I don't know how seriously to take Nightreign's canonicity, especially when it brings in figures like the Nameless King and Artorias from Dark Souls (I'm given to understand these are more like world bosses, rather than actual Lords of Night).

The mass and breadth of Elden Ring lore is fitting given how huge the game's world is. At the same time, though, I wonder if the creators at FromSoft might be burned out on it, having had to come up with so much stuff for it.

Only Dark Souls ever got direct sequels (again, not counting Nightreign) of From's souls-like games, and like I said before, I think that the third entry is itself an argument against sequels. But I'd still be really excited to see what they did with a revisit to the Lands Between (or Yharnam/wherever a Bloodborne II would take place).

Just Who Is Actually an Albinauric?

 Since growing up with Star Trek: The Next Generation and loving Data as a character, I've always had a real fascination with artificial people. Robots are a pretty classic staple of sci-fi, and I'm a big fan of them, but the notion of making a person who is meant to be not just human-like in behavior, but truly emulate human appearance and intelligence, is one that feels threaded throughout science fiction and even myth.

We're in a weird era regarding the development of artificial intelligence. The Large Language Models like Chat-GPT kind of took the world by storm, and everyone's trying to integrate them into their businesses and digital services before we really have a great sense of how useful they'll really be (my dad is a now-semi-retired professor of computer science at one of the top CS departments in the world, and has developed something of a reputation as one of the few vocal LLM skeptics in the field). Personally, I don't think that we've actually created real intelligence, nor digital consciousness (though proving consciousness is more of a philosophical debate than a technical one).

Still, the idea of an artificial person who thinks and feels is one I don't think is strictly impossible. After all, our own bodies and brains are just organic machines that have developed over billions of years of trial-and-error evolution. It stands to reason that we could make something similar with artificial materials.

Elden Ring has vast lore, and in typical FromSoft style, the nature of that lore is vague and implied, and very much open to interpretation. Just getting a broad timeline can be difficult, and I suspect that some might even contradict itself, the information we find in-game being imperfect.

However, within the lore, we have a type of being called the Albinaurics, and they've always fascinated me. Generally pale in complexion (whenever I type this I feel like it must be the UK spelling of the word, but then "complection," which feels like how it should be spelled, is always caught by spell-check functions), there are three kinds of Albinaurics we see in-game. Some look like wizened old men. Others look like fairly healthy young women. And lastly, we have bizarre bulbous-headed ones that look vaguely frog-like in appearance. The former two are both paraplegic, and in the case of the old men, their legs are literally fading from existence. The loss of their legs seems to be fatal - likely coinciding with other internal issues.

We know them to be artificial people, but it's not strictly clear who made them.

One possibility is that they're made by the Nox of the Eternal Cities, underground (in Elden Ring's "underdark"). But we don't actually see a lot of them there, other than the bloody red ones around Mohgwyn Palace. Instead, we see larval tears, the mercury-like blobs that can transform into people.

I suspect there's a connection between them, but I don't know that we can strictly say that the Albinaurics are created in the same way that the Mimic Tears are.

There are a few pretty clear suspects (even sometimes identified explicitly). Loretta, whom we fight a summoned spirit of at Caria Manor and later fight for real at Miquella's Haligtree (she's basically the midway boss in the Haligtree/Ephael legacy dungeon) is very likely an Albinauric. She has at least been a champion to them, and seems to have come there to protect Albinauric refugees seeking acceptance into Miquella's new society there (there are also some cocoons not unlike Miquella's that seem to have Albinaurics attempting to be reborn there - though, and this is a real aside, I saw a take somewhere that suggested that the body in the cocoon is actually Mohg's, not Miquella's, which honestly solves a lot of lore questions I've had, and we can just assume the Mohg we fight is a kind of projected manifestation of his through his blood, given that he and Morgott are clearly very adept at manifesting such projections. And hey, isn't the plan for Mohg to be "reborn" as Radahn?)

Anyway, all that aside, the fact that we face Loretta on horseback is actually kind of telling - while the wizened man Albinaurics will sometimes crawl at us, the Albinauric women often ride wolves to give them mobility. None of the non-frog-like Albinaurics can walk.

Put a pin in that.

Similar to Loretta, Gaius in the Shadow of the Erdtree is said I think explicitly to be an albinauric. He rides a massive boar (with what sometimes feels like an impossible large attacking hit-box that's insanely hard to dodge). His armor consists of only a chestpiece, gloves, and helmet, because he doesn't have legs (though we can find a set of leg armor that was evidently there to mock him).

Now, artificial life is not necessarily restricted to the Albinaurics. Already, we have the Mimic Tears. But as we discover in Shadow of the Erdtree, the Jar Warriors (who certainly count even in modern days) were originally created by stuffing Marika's people into jars in the hopes of creating a "Saint."

The exact meaning of "Saint" is an interesting one (I can think of two people explicitly called Saints, namely Trina and Romina,) but I think there's a very strong implication that Marika might have actually been the result of one of these jar rituals actually being a success. This would mean that, while the core of Marika was one of the Shamans from the village, she might have actually been combined with others to form an amalgam capable of being an Empyrean.

Her dual nature as Marika and Radagon has long been associated with the creation of the Alchemical Rebis, which is a goal of Alchemy.

But I wouldn't call her an Albinauric - she just might be a "made" person, and I'd even hesitate to say "artificial." (Though the fact that her form is like a crumbled statue at the end of the game really makes you wonder how organic she truly is - or anyone, for that matter.)

One thing that does seem to link Albinaurics - at least those of the first generation (and I will say now, I can't think of any real interesting stuff to say about there being a second generation of albinaurics with frog heads) - is the failure of their legs.

And you know who doesn't seem to have functional legs?

Literally all of Radagon and Renalla's children.

Admittedly, this is a bit circumstantial. We never see a full picture of Rykard before he merged with the God-Devouring Serpent, only portraits that are at best waist-up. We also never see Ranni in her original body, only the seemingly burned corpse she left at the top of the Liurnian Divine Tower.

But we do see Radahn in his original body.

One of the really endearing things about Radahn is that he mastered gravity magic so that his ancient horse, Leonard, could continue to carry him even when he grew to enormous size. Leonard is there in the boss fight against him in Caelid (we can presume the poor horse dies when we take him down).

Now, when we fight Radahn again in Enir-Elim at the end of the DLC, he's fully capable of running around on his own, but that's because he's literally been transplanted into Mohg's body. Much like Ranni has no problem standing up in the Age of Stars ending, it's because she's not in her original body (actually kind of interesting that the three children of Renalla aren't really in their original bodies anymore).

Anyway, Radahn is always on Leonard, even in the pre-release trailer when he faces off against Malenia. You know what else you might notice about his model during the boss fight?

Dude's got no feet.

Now, I think earlier on, there was speculation that this was just the result of his long madness under the effects of the Scarlet Rot, and that his feet were basically sanded away by his endless wandering across the battlefield.

But... what if the children of Radagon and Renalla are actually Albinaurics? Then, the degradation of Radahn's feet would be consistent with the affliction that the Albinaurics suffer. It would also explain the desperation that Ranni and Rykard each felt to find new bodies.

But what about Renalla and Radagon?

It's a real matter of debate as to whether Radagon was ever an independent individual, or if he was always just Marika's masculine persona (her animus, to use a Jungian term).

I'm inclined to think that neither of them is an Albinauric. Radagon obviously has no problem standing when we fight him at the end of the game (indeed, with all the botanical imagery in the game, Radagon represents a trellis with his Great Rune). And while Renalla cannot walk when we fight her (the second phase of the fight is actually an illusion created by Ranni to give her mother some dignity,) her sister Relanna is perfectly capable of walking around when we fight her, so Renalla's bed-ridden status might not be physiological so much as psychological.

How would that work, though?

Well, the first phase of the Renalla fight has a ton of legless children endlessly reborn by Renalla, who might actually be Albinaurics.

And this is something I've always struggled to unpack:

Why are the Knights of the Cuckoo called that?

The Cuckoo is a bird famous (infamous?) for destroying the eggs of other birds and laying their eggs in the empty nest. The mother bird victim will then raise the young Cuckoos, thinking they are her own.

And so, I had always thought that Renalla must be the victim of some similar plot. Was it just the amber-like egg containing her Rune of Rebirth?

Or was it three artificial children?

Look, it's a lot harder to trick a mother into thinking that children are hers than a father, given how physiology works (yes, I know that a trans father can be the one to carry the baby to term, but I'm using "mother" and "father" here in the sense of their reproductive role). But in Elden Ring, it's clear that birthing offspring does not necessarily work the way it does in our world.

There's lots of reason to believe that Radagon's marriage to Renalla was a matter of political expediency, and fully exploited the fact that Renalla probably thought it was a real act of love and equal partnership. Ranni is rightfully enraged that her mother was used so poorly, knowing what a magnificent and powerful person she had been. Renalla was clearly broken by Radagon's abandonment.

But given the callousness with which Radagon treated Renalla, I also think it is well within reason to think that he took full control over her heirs and offspring, making them rather than siring them.

Ironic, then, that if we consider the Age of Stars ending canonical (I don't think any single ending is likely to be considered canon, but the Age of Stars one feels the most right to me,) then it was one of these artificial children who would unmake the Golden Order and overthrow Marika.

Miquella's Innocent and Heartless Ambition

 In J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, the 1911 novelization of his play, Peter Pan, at the end of the story, an adult Wendy explains to her daughter that she can no longer fly, because she is no longer "gay and innocent and heartless," as she was when she was a child. (Obviously, "gay" here is meant in its older meaning, which was just kind of bright and joyful, though I'll leave it to others more qualified than I am to bring a queer perspective on the whole story).

This summation of childhood is rather striking: we tend to idealize childhood, before we were burdened with the responsibilities of adulthood, the effects of aging on our bodies, and the boundless possibilities that a life just at its outset hold.

But in doing so, we also forget some of the lessons that we've learned along with sorrows and regrets: that maturation is not only about losing that carefree innocence, but also learning the way in which our actions affect others. There's something of a solipsistic aspect of childhood, where adults, and even fellow children, don't necessarily feel like real people, but are instead simply those who might do things for or with us that we enjoy: they can provide comfort, feed us, protect us, entertain us.

This is natural: a child is so incapable of doing these things on their own, and even less capable of providing those things for others, that to burden a child with these sorts of responsibilities robs them of a period of crucial development.

In Elden Ring, Miquella is cursed with eternal youth. It's quite the ironic curse: among the most prevalent fantasies is the ability to return to a state of youth. People really went searching for the Fountain of Youth based on the legend of its existence. While his sister Malenia is cursed with rot, her body ever-deteriorating in a state of body horror that has robbed her of her eyes, an arm, and one full leg and one lower leg, Miquella is... fine, he just never matures into adolesence.

But I think this youth also affects something else: his capacity to understand nuance.

There's an interesting debate regarding whether Miquella is actually a good guy in Shadow of the Erdtree or not. I think that really depends on your sense of whether morality is measured purely by intent or if you must also consider the means.

I think there's a strong implication that Miquella is a force that guides us throughout Elden Ring, not just through the DLC. We know he was the previous rider of Torrent, and without our slaying of Radahn and Mohg, the necromantic ritual to put Radahn's soul into Mohg's body wouldn't be able to take place.

Then, it's a further question of interpretation to see whether he meant for us to simply serve him when he reached Enir-Elim, or if he actually intended for us to stop him. The latter feels hard to justify: he even calls upon us to abandon our claim to lordship and embrace his age of compassion when he emerges from the Divine Gate.

There's a big question I have regarding his divestment in the Land of Shadows: he sheds many of the things that make him himself: first parts of his corporeal body, but then aspects of his personality, along with his great rune and his feminine self, St. Trina.

There's a lot of Jungian psychology at play within this story (as well as alchemical symbolism - Jung was fascinated with alchemy as a metaphor for human psychology) and the clearest idea here would be that St. Trina was Miquella's "anima," or the feminine aspect of his personality.

But while it appears that Marika may have achieved her godhood by integrating her animus (the masculine aspect of a feminine mind - I don't know if Jung had any ideas of how a non-binary mind worked) into herself as Radagon, Miquella undergoes a paradoxical process of stripping out parts of himself on the road to apotheosis.

Though the Miquella who emerges from the Divine Gate actually does look slightly more mature - more like a teen than a pre-pubesecent child (though we get precious few glimpses of Miquella in his previous form) I wonder if his journey across the land of shadow is actually to try to lean in as hard as he can to his curse, to undo anything that grew him beyond the innocence of childhood.

Is it, then, that Miquella's attempt at an Age of Compassion is truly a return to childlike innocence?

Consider Radahn as his chosen consort. Radahn was a mighty sorcerer - surely it required great might to freeze the flow of fate and the movement of the stars - but there's a bit of informed ability in the way he's described. Radahn seems, in some ways, to be among the most childlike demigods. He mastered gravity magic to allow his poor, old, nearly-dead horse to continue to serve as his steed, even as he grew to giant-like proportions, because he could not entertain the idea of parting with the horse he loved (it's truly the most endearing part of his character). We're told that Radahn is the greatest general in the Lands Between, and he has the loyal Redmane knights serving him.

But other than the stars (an act that I think is more sorcery than warcraft,) who does Radahn ever beat? He comes to a theoretical stalemate with Malenia, but surely that's a pretty big loss for him (both his body and Caelid are wrecked by her rot) and when we see art of the Shattering War, it appears that Morgott kicks his ass.

Is Radahn actually just good at playing the warrior? I mean, sure, the boss fight against him and Miquella at the end of the DLC is probably the toughest FromSoft boss I've faced (well, there are Dark Souls and Dark Souls III bosses I never got past, so put an asterisk there) but notably he's using Mohg's body. Mohg, the son of Godfrey.

But I think there's another element to Miquella that really keys into this Peter Pan quote:

If you are grabbed twice during the fight against Miquella and Radahn, and don't use his broken Great Rune to clear the status effect of the first grab, you get a non-standard alternative to "You Died," which is "Heart Stolen."

Now, obviously, that's a common metaphor used to describe becoming enamored of someone - that your significant other or your child has "stolen your heart," but I also think that this could also imply what his mission is: to steal everyone's hearts to restore them to a state of innocence and heartlessness. Where everyone is a child once again.

It's just that "being a child" can mean both free and imaginative, but also hopelessly self-centered and immature.

Miquella uses people. He used Mohg. He tried but failed to use Godwyn. He used Radahn. He wanted to use us. And the thing is, it's not even that this was done maliciously: I think that his curse of youth just makes it impossible for him to understand that this is wrong.

Sir Ansbach is probably the most popular NPC in Shadow of the Erdtree, and he represents basically the opposite of all of this (I've also seen him compared with Gideon the All-Knowing, but that element isn't what I'm here to talk about). Ansbach is someone who seems to be a very old man, with the regret and pains of a past that has also taught him great wisdom. He understands the value of honor and honesty. He shares the truth with those who deserve to have it, but then also respects that people will make decisions for themselves.

Some have questioned whether he's actually a good guy, though I think it's telling that he was the leader of the "Pureblood" knights, and that the current servants of Mohg are the Cessblood. While "pureblood" is a real red flag for me when people use it regarding, like, racial ancestry, I don't think that is the context we're meant to take it in in this case.

Instead, I think we're meant to understand that Ansbach served Mohg a long, long, long time ago. We don't really know what Mohg was like before Miquella began to influence him, and while I always got the sense that Mohg and Morgott represented opposite impulses toward their mother (Morgott seeking to prove himself the true and loyal son despite his Omen status, and Mohg rebelling against a mother who tried to dump him in a hellish pit) I do wonder if Mohg's earlier dreams of his Mohgwyn Dynasty were not as murderous. The presence of Ansbach, who is the very ideal of an honorable knight, who demonstrates real courage in confessing his terror at what you face, but never turning away from it, suggests that Mohg at one point must have had some true virtue to gain the loyalty of such a lieutenant.

What Ansbach represents is the mature ability to tolerate differences, to give respect and honor even to one's adversaries. When summoned into the final fight, he greets Radahn with true respect, but also states clearly his purpose in fighting: that the theft and exploitation of Mohg's body is a dishonor.

Ansbach has heart - the very organ that pumps the blood that is the symbol of Mohg's regime.

And yes, there's an irony here: Miquella claims that he is ushering in an age of compassion. But how can one have compassion without heart?

    As a final note:

While a different game from a different studio, though one in the same game genre, Lies of P has an interesting view on all of this. Alchemy is explicitly a big part of that game's story, and the pursuit of immortality is a huge element of it.

In the backstory, the Alchemists of Krat made contact with an ancient, pre-human being and asked to be granted immortality. The being didn't really understand what they meant by that, and so gifted humanity the petrification disease as a way to turn themselves into everlasting crystalline beings.

In your journeys through the game, you encounter an NPC called Giangio, who seems like he must be a young apprentice among the Alchemists. At the end of the game, though, Giangio departs the city and there's a cutscene implying that he's looking for other immortals or special individuals (with Dorothy from Wizard of Oz strongly implied to be his next) for some grander project. He leaves a signed letter with the initials P.P.

Now, the general consensus is that this is for Phillipus Paracelsus, a real 16th-century alchemist credited as the "father of toxicology." In the game's world, Paracelsus is one of the most prominent members of the Alchemists, and his youthful appearance is probably the result of his own work.

But my initial guess was that P.P. stood for something else: Peter Pan.

Both Pinnochio and Peter Pan emerged as characters in the late 19th century (L. Frank Baum technically gets into the 19th century just barely under the wire with the 1900 publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) and Peter Pan, of course, is an immortal because of the way that Neverland prevents him from ever aging (unless you consider Hook cannon).

Now, in no way am I suggesting that there's any continuity between Lies of P and Elden Ring. But I think both are Souls-like games that (might) touch on the dark side of childhood innocence.

At War with the Mystics: Demiurges, Mysticism, and the Humanist Hero

 I was thinking about the power of music in FromSoft games.

While I never hit that point myself (getting stuck on Ornstein and Smough and thus only getting about halfway through the game,) one of the most famous shocks in gaming music history is the melancholy "plin plin plon" of Gwyn's battle music in the original Dark Souls. Here, a Zeus-like patriarchal deity, most powerful of all the Lords, is confronted not to the tune of an epic, soaring orchestra, but a tragic piano piece that tells the players more than any other cue that the Gwyn we face is a hollow shell of the god he once was - he has given his very soul to the Fire, and tragically, this was not enough to keep his Age of Fire going forever. Gwyn, misguided and guilty of many crimes with the noble goal of perpetuating his golden age, is set up to be someone we can hate, the oppressor and tyrant whom we can take down, but when we finally meet him, he's a figure of pity, and his defeat at our hands is more of a mercy than the vanquishing of a villain.

There's a trope common to a lot of games that come from Japan - also very prevalent in Final Fantasy - where the final boss of a game is celestial, angelic, deific in aesthetic. In FF, consider our confrontations with Kefka, Sephiroth, and most recently Ultima in FFXVI. Both Kefka and Sephiroth are mortals who have attained some kind of divinity, and now sport angelic wings (or just a single one in the latter's case) and are fought in a sky where sunlight is only kept from blinding us by fluffy clouds limned in gold.

Elden Ring, having its extensive Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, effectively has two final bosses (much as Dark Souls and Bloodborne did, and DSIII kind of had three thanks to having two DLCs, though the latter can only be accessed after finishing the former). Elden Ring's two "final bosses," though, are both not only aesthetically coded along these deific lines, but the victory-toast the game gives you when either boss is defeated is "God Slain."

In traditional mythological terms, the villains defeated and/or slain by heroes are monstrous - it is the gods themselves who, in Greek and Norse myth, defeat the monsters. Zeus reestablishes himself as the rightful king of the gods by burying Typhon, the ultimate monster, under Mount Etna. The Norse gods, being a bit more metal (and a bit more death-culty, to be frank) are destined to fall in battle against monstrous foes - Odin rides into the maw of Fenrir, Thor slays Jormungandr but dies to the world-serpent's final poisoned breath, and Heimdall and Loki fall to one another in battle, the latter having transgressed beyond mischief and into true chaos.

In Abrahamic tradition, Satan/Lucifer plays the role of the ultimate evil (especially in Christianity and Islam - Judaism believes in more of a monopolar cosmos) and his fall from grace comes with a monstrous transformation. Among the most powerful icons in Christianity is the archangel Michael casting Lucifer down from heaven, Michael a paragon of human-like beauty (albeit with immaculate white bird's wings) and Lucifer growing grotesque and monstrous in shape.

There is a whole other post to be written about the way that foreign deities were incorporated as demons in Abrahamic demonology, and how that's clearly paralleled in Elden Ring's literal demonization of the hornsent into the omens, but while traditional fantasy tends to buy into this dichotomy of the angelic/celestial as good and grotesque/infernal as evil, our heroes rarely find themselves in opposition to the light/heavenly-affiliated forces.

And yet, there is something deep in the tradition that suggests a degree of skepticism: Lucifer literally means light-bringer, and he's often given the epithet Morning Star (I believe that Lucifer is sometimes directly translated as that). For all the aesthetics of light being good, there's always been, baked into that, a certain skepticism.

I'll come out and say this: I don't really think I can give a comprehensive definition of Gnosticism. It's a religious/spiritual belief system that is sort of parallel to Christian thought but also in some cases incorporated into it. Gnosticism seeks "gnosis," or knowledge.

Gnosticism, as I understand it, is a diverse and complex set of beliefs, and I once again want to just place this caveat that I'm someone who has just browsed some wikipedia articles about it, so take everything with the message "this is more complex than I'm going to be able to phrase it here."

However, among the most fascinating ideas within Gnosticism is the notion of a Demiurge.

The demiurge is a being who created the physical world, but this act was not the true creation of the cosmos. Instead, it was at best misguided and at worst, an sin against the true creator. Here, the Manichean notion of dualism - of the pure, holy existence of the soul and the profane, imperfect existence of the body - means that as conscious beings, we're trapped in the physical world, and that only through spiritual purification can we escape and live as the luminous, eternal beings unbounded by the profane world and experience true life.

This is such a fascinating idea, and it's one that also underlies a lot of ideological territory I, personally, find repugnant. Like, for example, I remember seeing a bumper sticker that said "Forget global warming, worry about earthly burning," which I understood to mean that we should ignore the dangers of climate change and focus only on religious devotion - something I consider more of an ideological cover for irresponsibility and capitulation to a capitalist drive to extract resources heedless of the damage it does to the ecosystem we rely upon to survive.

And yet, there is something compelling to the idea that this physical world we know is not the be-all and end-all, that even if we've lived a life of pain and misery, a better world awaits us on the other side of the veil of death.

Life is, after all, imperfect. Growing up, we struggle for freedom, unaware of what support we might lack, and our prime years of our physical peaks end far earlier than seems fair, only for us to decline and endure new, lasting pains. There are many things we can do to mitigate this, and spirituality is one of the most popular practices to do so. For the moments of joy we experience in life, it seems cruel and unfair that we might not simply extend those moments indefinitely.

The symbol of the Ying-Yang is sometimes depicted with a white circle in the black half and a black circle in the white half, making it almost look like two fish intertwined with one another. And I think that reflects, to some extent, an ambiguity of which impulse we are following.

The conflict between good and evil as a foundational idea in human psychology and culture, but it's also a difficult one to pin down - for example, on a political level, the very people who I consider to be our society's villains and enemies to the rightful order of the world, will often use "evil" to describe their opponents - their opponents being the proponents of something more closely approximating my beliefs of how our society should work.

But I think there's another kind of meta-conflict here that gets complicated when we put it through the filter of Gnosticism.

The deific antagonists of these games are often, or at least sometimes, not so much evil for the sake of evil as they are committed to an apocalyptic ideology. And I want to just quickly clarify that while modern parlance takes "apocalyptic" to mean "world-ending," the literal meaning is "revelation." Calypso was a Greek goddess of secrets, and so "apocalypse" was the revelation of that hidden truth. (Which is why the Christian book about the end of the world, likely actually written as an allegorical piece of political commentary about Emperor Nero, is the Book of Revelations).

Both Gwyn and Marika wind up turning benign or perhaps neutral forces into monstrous dangers out of a fear of their power - the Dark is sealed away by Gwyn and becomes this monstrous Abyss. Marika seals away the Outer Gods, and each goes from something natural and orderly, like Rot's protective verdigris and preservation as seen in Rauh into the Annihilation-like chaos of Caelid. Miquella's goal of perfect peace and compassion creates paranoid zealots like Leda who cannot tolerate anything but a lockstep hive-mind.

While I don't know if the Dark Souls games ever give a real origin to Gwyn's doubts, Elden Ring's demiurge allegory is more explicit - we find that the beings who orchestrate the succession of divinities are themselves receiving their marching orders from a being that has lost her connection to the Greater Will. The role of demiurge in Elden Ring's cosmos could arguably be played by Marika or Metyr, or even the Elden Beast, but in each case (Elden Beast maybe get back to me on that,) the instructions are garbled, and the intended order is broken.

Indeed, to the adherents of the Flame of Frenzy, even the Greater Will might, itself, be a false demiurge - the broken, split-off remnant of the true god, the One Great, whose error in leaving this state of singular wholeness was an mistake whose only remedy is the re-merging of all things into a singular state once again (as horrific as that might be).

However, I think that figures like Marika and Miquella might actually fit another trope:

Mysticism, broadly speaking, is spiritual practice that seeks to attain some higher state of being. In some readings, it's the attempt to achieve godhood. The practice of Alchemy, which ultimately gave rise to modern science, was one such practice, which sought to achieve spiritual aims through understanding the physical matter of the universe and how to manipulate it.

Modern, secular science, was kind of born out of the abandonment of this mystical aspect - seeking to understand physical law without any prejudicial notions about the moral or metaphysical implications.

Gnosticism is, arguably, a mystical practice - the belief that one could escape the false world of the demiurge through spiritual purification is itself that kind of ascension.

And yet, I think that mystics make for excellent villains in fantasy stories. Elden Ring is awash with alchemical imagery (consider how important the various metals are, especially gold, silver, quicksilver, and copper - the "red gold" of the crucible) and I think it's implied that the manner in which Marika ascended to godhood, as well as the steps that Miquella is taking to do the same, are some profound working of an alchemical Magnum Opus (Marika herself has become a Rebis, a being of female and male aspects, the white queen and the red(-haired) king).

In another stand-out of the Souls-like genre, Lies of P, while doing a very unique take on the story of Pinnochio, makes its primary villains Alchemists, a group of people who want to transcend humanity to become god-like immortals, and have used ancient, powerful magic to distill human memory and consciousness into physical material they can use as fuel for their ascension.

And I think this is all, strangely, in keeping with the Mystical practice - even as mystics try to attain secret, esoteric knowledge to ascend, there's an implied danger - that if you follow the wrong path, you'll wind up more like the demiurge. Even with the best intentions, you might wind up creating greater suffering and greater evil if you fail to get it right.

I'm reminded, actually, of the story of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings. While his predecessor, the first Dark Lord Morgoth, was basically just someone who sought to usurp god and ruin creation in favor of whatever he wanted to do, Sauron genuinely repented his affiliation with Morgoth, but it was in this repentance that he found his second fall - Morgoth's corruption had left the world irrevocably damaged and tainted, and Sauron wanted to fix it. But his project to fix it ultimately led him to convince himself that he needed to become an absolute tyrant so that others couldn't interfere with his plans, and when people wouldn't just stand aside, his frustration turned into cruelty and, you know, basically the Dark Lord we all know from the story.

But, even if by the point he's showing up as Annatar, the Gift-Giver, and distributing rings of power, he's probably become pretty cynical and deceitful, he's still got this angelic visage that he uses to appear as a benign heavenly messenger, and perhaps he does, still, genuinely, believe that that's his true form.

What, then, is the remedy? What is the opposing force to these demiurges?

Well, ironically, it's the anti-mystic. It's the humanist.

Now, the way my dad describes it, my sister and I were raised as secular humanists. He's both an atheist and a scientist, raised in an irreligious but culturally Jewish family (there are distant cousins on that side who are quite orthodox, but my dad and grandparents were not believers. My mom was a kind of agnostic cultural Catholic, and while she had big problems with the Church (especially after the sex abuse scandals) she never fully renounced a belief that there might be some truth to the supernatural, spiritual message.

Humanist has often been conflated with atheism, often by humanists themselves, but I think my stance is a little more agnostic (Carl Sagan, a famous humanist, also considered himself an agnostic, but I think leaned farther toward the atheist end of that spectrum).

But what I think is that the philosophical stance of humanism is not as concerned with determining whether there is some supernatural element to the universe or whether god exists, as much as it is the stance that those questions, however compelling, don't need to be the basis for moral and ethical philosophy. It is a belief (as I see it) that the answer to what is moral and right is not some esoteric mystery to be coded in secret symbols, but is something that we humans are equipped to understand on a basic level: that the simple act of treating others with respect and empathy is a better guide to living a moral life than some thousands-of-years-old book of mythology.

Ironically, opponents of humanism might view it as an arrogant position, usurping the wisdom of the divine with the beliefs of mere mortals, but I think one of the core values of humanism is humility - the readiness to adjust one's view when new ideas are presented to you.

Humanism also embraces this humility with a fundamental, underlying belief that the classic social hierarchies are man-made, and should not be viewed as inherent. A person's poverty is not necessarily a sign of divine disfavor, but might simply be the product of one's circumstances.

Humanism also focuses in on the real and tangible - rather than seeking to ascend past one's nature through some kind of mystical ascension, the humanist instead tries to embrace the experience of being human and embrace it with all of its imperfections.

And there's an irony - part of why I mentioned the Ying-Yang earlier - because on one level, you could see humanism as the very opposite of Gnosticism. Here, humanism embraces the world as it is, the flawed world of the demiurge, and dismisses the fabled spiritual world beyond as either a fantasy or at least an irrelevancy.

But it's also possible that this is the very spiritual enlightenment that such mystical practices seek to find.

Among the two most popular religious traditions in the world, Christianity and Buddhism, espouse the abandonment of desires for worldly gains - Buddha was a prince who experimented with asceticism, but found that a middle path was the true route to enlightenment. Jesus sought to model a moral way of living, but did so by fraternizing with lepers, thieves and prostitutes, showing them empathy and kindness when the society as a whole saw them as impure and wicked.

My humanist reading on these spiritual traditions is that both model an embrace of humanism - and essentially that the dogged obsession with spiritual purification is itself an obstacle toward true spiritual growth.

Boy, we got really deep on philosophy. What does this have to do with video games?

Well, these games present us with grand, sweeping, epic narratives of those who would remake and reshape the world, and it places us frail mortals, as mortal combatants against gods. We are humans - flawed, corrupted, profane, magnificent.

The games tend to give us multiple endings, and at least FromSoft's games tend to make the morality of these endings very ambiguous. Is it better to Link the Fire, and extend Gwyn's age into a third, likely diminished phase, or is it better to see the rise of the Dark? Shall we restore the Elden Ring and Marika's reign, and if so, adjust the order to better fit the world in some way? Or shall we see some new age of stars, with as-yet-unknown wonders and terrors to come?

The thing is, I don't know that the ending is the point. I think that whatever new reality results from our actions, it's more important that we deal with the reality as it is.

If this feels unsatisfying, that the conclusion is simply "well, whatever happens happens," then yeah, that's the frustration of having this kind of worldview. But that very frustration is also part of the human experience. It's one of the imperfections that makes us who we are. Our heroes are not just about preserving a static status quo, but neither are we going to go along with anyone with a plan to change things up. We will take all things on their own terms.

Miquella and the Maximialist Pursuit of Perfection

 What is it that Count Ymir sees in Miquella that condemns him to failure just as the latter's mother, Marika encountered?

One of the strange things about Elden Ring is that, years after my first journey into the Lands Between, I'm not entirely sure whether Marika is a villain or a hero. To be sure, great suffering and pain came from her actions. But I think her intentions were noble.

Death is the wellspring of suffering. Pain evolved to warn us about impending injury and death. Hunger is the fear that we will starve. More complex, emotional pains, such as seeing a friend drift away or breaking up with a romantic partner, is a pain of loss, the loss of what could potentially happen had the relationship remained intact, and the loss of the familiar joys experienced in that relationship.

I believe that one of the greatest philosophical efforts in human history has been reconciling with the existential terror of death. It has led some to believe that death is necessary, and good, even. That it gives a life meaning by constraining it within certain parameters.

To be frank, and not to get super-dark here in what is ultimately the discussion of a video game, I think that this is mainly a coping mechanism, that there is little reason to think of death in any positive way.

Instead, I would say, philosophically, I have two paths to help with this fear: one is the humanistic path, which acknowledges but does not focus on the eventuality of death, instead preferring to live in the here and now, to remain grounded, and to find the joys and value in the people one is surrounded by, and to appreciate all the nuances of human life. The other path is the agnostic path, which believes that our own ignorance as to what death might be like could allow for something wondrous, or at the very least, not an unending nothingness devoid of any meaning or consciousness.

This latter path, I think, is what appeals to me about the Age of Stars ending for the game. My interpretation is that what Ranni seeks to make of the world is one in which the grand ambitions of the divine and powerful are separated from the lives of the people. It will not have the comforts of a divine being presiding over all things, but will also lack a divine tyrant domineering all things. We go into darkness, fear, and loneliness, but these don't inherently mean that what lurks within that darkness is a bad thing.

Still, if Marika's initial plan was to create a world free of death, I don't think that's an ignoble goal.

The problem, I think, is one of perfection.

The antagonists of many a fantasy story are the villains who seek to ultimately fix things. Sauron, the most iconic fantasy villain (even though we never actually see him in the novels - Peter Jackson visualized him as the giant flaming eye, but if I recall the novels correctly, the eye was more metaphorical than something actually visible over the wastes of Mordor), has a surprisingly nuanced backstory. A Maia first drawn into rebellion under Morgoth, Sauron's defeat during that time eventually saw him genuinely penitent, seeking to redeem himself for his collusion with evil.

And yet, Sauron became convinced that he was the only one capable of fixing the world and bringing peace and order. The inability to let go, and to recognize that he was not the right person to do this fixing (fittingly, he was a Maia of crafting,) led him to view any opposition to him as opposition to the salvation of the world, and totally lost perspective, resorting to those old Morgoth tactics and threatening the world with darkness and tyranny.

It's debatable to what degree Radagon and Markia agreed or disagreed in their aims and methods. But I think it's interesting that, as many have pointed out elsewhere, the Rebis-like being that Mairka-Radagon is seems to be a successful (or seemingly successful) Magnum Opus - the ultimate goal of Alchemy, which is both a precursor to modern chemistry and physics but also an esoteric mystic practice. Mystical practices are generally concerned with discovering secret truths about the nature of reality and often using said practices to ascend in some way from the normal human state.

But even if these practices can be helpful as metaphors or frameworks in which to resolve, for example, psychological traumas and neuroses, or as alchemy did, give birth to modern science (I don't know who said it, but someone once said that Isaac Newton wasn't the first physicist, but the last alchemist), they do, by the very nature of seeking to ascend beyond humanity's current state, often tempt people to abandon that grounded, humanistic ethos.

History is rife with examples of people taking some complex philosophical worldview and, in putting it into practice, go on to wage wars and slaughter innocent people. Consider all the religious conflicts even within a given religion, where the basic principles of the faith remain the same, but subtle details give rise to violent conflict.

Ironically, the message of some of the world's most popular religious movements have often had at their cores a message that encourages a humble acceptance of the human condition, and a respect for all others who endure the same challenges - but even the most peace-and-love-oriented philosophy can, under the right circumstances, be used to justify war and hatred.

Which brings us to Miquella.

In the base game, before we got Shadow of the Erdtree, Miquella appeared in many ways to be the most benevolent of the demigods, and of the Empyreans, the one that seemed most fit to succeed Marika as the god of the next age. Was there reason to doubt this? Oh, for sure: chief amongst them being that I don't think any FromSoft game has ever given us anyone with any significant level of power and authority who can be fully trusted.

Still, Miquella seemed to be providing a home for the downtrodden of the Lands Between, such as the Albinaurics, and worked hard to restore Godwyn to true life.

Of course, what we've learned since Shadow of the Erdtree is that some of the assumptions we had were missing key elements: Yes, Mohg appears to have raided the Haligtree and captured Miquella in the midst of his cocoon/tree-womb transformation, taking him to his ruins underground. But it was only in SotE that we discovered that it was Miquella who had "captured" Mohg, laying his mind-control upon the omen and planting this notion of an omen as Elden Lord within Mohg's head, all to ultimately steal Mohg's body so that Radahn could have one free of the Scarlet Rot (well, either that and/or using his omen blood to get into the Lands of Shadow).

There are some strange ironies to Miquella's path to apotheosis - a path that he does actually seem to succeed on, though only briefly (though dear lord, I took my second character into that final boss fight of the DLC and I had forgotten just how brutally difficult it is. I'm a little ashamed that I used a cheese build to take down Simon in Expedition 33, as I wonder which boss would rank higher for me if I beat both the conventional way. At least I got Radahn and Miquella once, so I can stick that feather in my cap).

First off, his choice of consort is an interesting one - he picks the greatest warrior of his demigod siblings (though remember that there is art in the introduction to the game of Morgott evidently kicking Radahn's ass) to usher in his age of peace.

I don't really know what to make of the fact that Miquella is the only male empyrean and chooses a male consort/Elden Lord. While I don't think that gender is arbitrary for the demigods, I also don't know whether Miquella's intention is to actually try to reproduce (indeed, he might have seen his mother's choice to have children as a flaw in her plan). I'm also disinclined to read too much into the fact that his chosen consort is a relative, as this isn't exactly unheard of among gods (the Olympians were certainly in-bred).

But I think the stranger thing is this: Miquella removes elements of himself during his pilgrimage through the Lands of Shadow, discarding parts of his body, yes, but also parts of his personality, and even St. Trina, his own Radagon-like other self.

While we don't have a great timeline on how long Miquella has been in the Lands of Shadow by the time we get there (my usual bet is that if something happened, it happened long before we ever started our game) but there is some reason to believe that he's not right there up in Enir-Elim when we get to the Shadowlands, because it's not until we're approaching the Shadow Keep (which some have suggested might actually be Helphen's Steeple, the central keep of the land of the dead, re-branded and repurposed by Messmer during his campaign against the Hornsent) that we hear the resonating shattering of Miquella's Great Rune. Given that we find the remains of the rune below the Scadutree, and get it off of the Scadutree Avatar, we might guess that it was shattered either within that arena or that it was discarded there from above, at the Shadow Keep. At the moment of that shattering, was Miquella there to do the breaking of the rune?

Each demigod's Great Rune ties into their nature in some way, and we've always known that Miquella was capable of magically charming people. The many NPCs that we travel the Lands of Shadow with are all under this magical compulsion when we start, but when the rune shatters, the camaraderie immediately collapses - for some. Actually, it's interesting that some people remain loyal to Miquella, including Dain, Freyja, and of course Needle Knight Leda. It's after this point at which Sir Ansbach makes it clear: that Miquella's power of compulsion is the most terrifying weapon he's ever witnessed, and even fell to it after he tried to free his lord Mohg from the same.

But let's examine that irony:

Miquella's journey to godhood involves a casting-off of many of the things that make him who he is. The first several Miquella Crosses we find say things like "here I cast off a part of my flesh" or "here I cast off my arm sinister" (in this case, I think we should take this literally as his left arm - there's another that says he casts off his arm dexter, meaning right arm). This physical dismemberment is certainly strange, but in the context of someone ascending to godhood, it doesn't actually seem all that crazy to try to transcend his physical form.

But, particularly when we get to the southern reaches of the Cerulean Coast, we find that he has discarded his "doubt and vacillation." These, of course, are not physical elements (at least we don't think they are,) and suggests that he has fully committed to what he needs to do. That being said, it's interesting that there was such doubt and vacillation, and that he needed to make some effort to keep those feelings from preventing him from doing what he needs to do to achieve his goal.

Deeper, within the Stone Coffin Fissure, we find that he has discarded his love.

And here, I think we need to slam the brakes. How does Miquella expect to bring about an age of compassion if he has removed from himself the emotion most closely tied to compassion?

Well, we could read this not as his capacity for love, but "his love" as referring to a person, namely St. Trina, the way that one refers to someone special, such as a romantic partner or one's child (or pets) as "my love."

And yet, in this realm of gods and demigods and saints, the person of St. Trina could also represent, truly, his love in the broader sense.

The point is, there's an irony to the way that Miquella conducts himself. His Great Rune, which gave him the unassailable power to enchant others to adore him, is broken while we are in the Land of Shadows. I assume (though to be fair, it's possible that there's some other explanation) that he's the one who breaks it, as part of his divestment tour before entering the Divine Gate.

And yet, when we actually face Miquella, he has the ability to, much as he did to Ansbach in their initial battle, artfully steal the heart of the player, giving us an alternate loss condition to "You Died" that says "Heart Stolen." (Here, there might be a bit of gameplay/story separation, unless the light of grace also purges this enchantment upon us - in theory, this fate seems like it could give Miquella his permanent victory). But if his Great Rune is shattered, how can he do this anymore?

I don't really have an answer for that, other than that perhaps he rebuilt a new version of that rune as part of his apotheosis.

Again, though, his end goal might be a noble one - to create a world of peace and compassion. I wonder if his choice of Radahn as consort is even, perhaps, a test to that vision - that if he can make the greatest warrior of the demigods to serve the cause of eternal peace, it will show the ultimate feasibility of bringing peace to the world.

As is often the case, NPCs can play a mirror role to the demigods. Needle-Knight Leda is our first guide into the Land of Shadow, and takes on an unofficial leadership position within the Miquella fan club (aka most of the NPCs we meet in the Shadow Lands). But the moment that Miquella's rune is shattered, Leda reveals her true nature: that of a psychopathic zealot, obsessed with rooting out and slaying anyone who isn't sufficiently committed to Miquella's cause. Leda asks the Tarnished for accusations of disloyalty, but even if you don't suggest anyone, she'll eventually decide to go after people.

How is Leda, one who is so dedicated to this demigod that represent peace and compassion, so vindictive and bloodthirsty?

Well, it's because her zealotry is maximalist. When you're convinced your cause is perfectly good and that any other cause must therefore be evil, you seek further and further purification.

It's almost as if Leda is looking for someone to purge before she actually has any reason to believe that anyone has actually been disloyal to Miquella. And here, we see another pattern repeated in real-world religion. In less religiously-tolerant times, there were instances of people being put to death merely for raising the possibility that their faith was shaken. Extreme political movements will sometimes force members to repeat and propagate clear falsehoods in order to prove their loyalty to the movement, and the trajectory seems to be to ever-tighten the borders of acceptable deviation.

And this is the peril of a maximalist, perfectionist vision for the world. If the philosophy requires some flawless, perfected ideal, it will inevitably begin to exclude more and more people who cannot fit into that mold.

Both Marika and Miquella sought absolute victories. Marika wished for endless abundant life free from death. Miquella wished for endless peace and compassion without conflict.

Marika's order backfired - removing death, removing the ending of things, meant that the very things she wanted to end persisted, such as Those Who Live in Death. Miquella doesn't have much of a chance to actually rule over things, but one imagines that if he had succeeded, the endless pursuit of perfect virtue under his order would have wound up purging anyone left, perhaps leaving only Leda, who might get the idea that even her god had failed to live up to her standards.

Peace isn't so appealing when it's the peace of a lifeless world.

The solution, then, would seem to be one in which imperfection is embraced, where we accept that future conflicts might arise, that there will continue to be suffering and pain, but where we hold these things all loosely. Bizarrely, perhaps the Age of Fracture is actually the best ending to the game.

Ranni's Age of Stars could mean something very different and new, and I think that her intention to be a distant and non-interventionist god could give us something like that acceptance of all the imperfections of reality. On the other hand, if we take this too extremely far, we could run into the same issues. Direct domination by a divine sovereign does not seem like it has worked out very well in the world of Elden Ring. But total absence of any kind of guidance might also lead to problems, where others might attempt to replicate an idealized past of the Golden Order or other previous eras, forgetting the lessons that led to the Age of Stars.

Even the focus on the grounded, here-and-now humanity must not be pursued to a maximalist degree - to do so would be to deny the human impulse to wonder and imagine the possibilities of how things might be different. Cutting out that desire of ascension would be just as erroneous an exclusion as Marika's removal of the Rune of Death.

Grrrrr.... Maybe I Might Try Nightreign (I Haven't Yet)

 The games industry has had it in for single-player games for a while now. If you'll permit this nearly-40-year-old (one year and one week, baby!) to talk about "back in my day" for a second, the very notion of having a video game console connected to the internet was something that only came about in the third generation of consoles that I actually played (which I think is typically called the fifth generation? I'm talking about the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era). The video games that I cut my teeth on, like Super Mario World, Ocarina of Time, and even games famed for their multiplayer like GoldenEye and Super Smash Bros, were built assuming no connection to that grand network of information that sits at the center of modern society.

Gamers did have "LAN Parties," where they'd connect computers to what I think stood for Local Area Network, and could play things like Quake together. But I didn't really do that much, and so for me, a multiplayer game was one that I typically played on a split-screen. Yes, those old boxy CRT TVs where what would now be considered a rather standard-sized TV would be considered an enormous big-screen, would be divided into two or even four segments for different players to occupy.

The thing is, in this era, you knew the people you were playing with. Oh, sure, you could go to a friend's house and meet someone new, obviously, but it wasn't the kind of purely random people that you get on the internet.

There is a tension in multiplayer: if you want to play with friends, you need to schedule and coordinate. You also need to calibrate varying levels of enthusiasm. You might want to play for four hours, but your friend might find their enthusiasm flagging after one. Or vice versa, you have to feel bad that you're bringing the fun to an end when you're not really feeling it anymore.

The solution of online matchmaking, then, allows for you to play when you feel like it - if you drop out, the people you were playing with can just find someone else. Or, if the people you're playing with drop out, you can find someone else.

But it's not going to be as fun as playing with people you know.

This blog started as an exclusively World of Warcraft-focused one. I had been playing WoW for a couple years before, during Wrath of the Lich King, I had a really good dungeon group and the party leader invited me to their guild. During Wrath, for the first time (having started in late Vanilla, but late enough that I didn't hit the level cap until Burning Crusade, so I wouldn't have had the chance to do any raiding in vanilla anyway) I had a guild that did weekly raid nights (actually, I think for a time we'd do two nights a week). It was great, and I gradually became one of the raid leaders (my main being a tank helped push me into a leadership role). It was great, though when Cataclysm came out and the difficulty of raiding went up quite precipitously, our momentum stalled out. Off and on, we'd have periods where we got back together to run raids, even downing the first boss of Antorus during Legion in the first week (a big accomplishment for our very casual guild). But as younger players in the guild went off to join more progression-minded raiding guilds and players sort of drifted away, the guild is a shell of its former self, rarely having more than two or three members on at a time.

Today, I still play WoW, but as the game has developed more solo-content, I've found myself focused more and more on that. Honestly, I don't really do much raiding even in LFR (the match-made lowest raiding difficulty) and primarily do Delves, a new feature that is like a dungeon that can be for 1-5 players. I could probably play WoW offline if that were an option and not change much about my playstyle.

And that's fine in some ways: as I discovered D&D, my weekly "get together with people for some fantasy game stuff" became that instead of raiding, and I find it more exciting because of how much creativity is involved.

But it comes back to the weird thing: In a lot of ways, the online nature of WoW can often be the worst part of it. It isn't always - sometimes it's really exciting to be there with other players working toward some shared goal.

So, what about Nightreign?

Well, I adore Elden Ring. It and Bloodborne both are probably in my top 10 favorite video games (I haven't made a list or anything, but that feels right). And, having thought Shadow of the Erdtree might be the last we ever see of that universe (given its success, I could imagine a direct sequel, but I also suspect that they might choose instead to develop a new IP for their next spiritual sequel to Demon's Souls - I read Dark Souls III as being a cautionary tale about the very notion of prolonging a story past its natural ending). But I can't deny the allure of discovering new things about the world of Elden Ring, even if there's a general consensus that this game is extra-canonical, in a separate timeline or something.

Like how many fans have rejected much of Dark Souls II because it wasn't directed by series creator/auteur Hidetaka Miyazaki (it's insane to me that they released DSII, Bloodborne, and DSIII as annual releases back to back,) I wonder if people will find that the ideas and lore of Nightreign doesn't truly sit as a piece with the broader ideas of Elden Ring.

But is that such a crime? After all, the auteur theory is kind of bullshit (another game I adore, Alan Wake II, is all about rejecting the idea of the auteur theory, and the man who is often treated as the auteur of Remedy Studios, Sam Lake, has emphasized how important collaboration is).

Visually, the game looks stunning, and I'm very curious about the stories it wishes to tell.

The question, though, is how effectively a game can tell a story when it is built around the short-term gameplay loop of a co-op and somewhat roguelike system.

I'm on the fence, but this is arguably movement toward Nightreign, as I had been largely convinced I was staying away from it.

Kinda Sounds Like I'm Not Going to Get Nightreign

 The announcement of something new Elden Ring-related a few months ago shocked me, coming so soon after the release of the staggeringly massive Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, which could have passed for a sequel if the base game hadn't been even bigger.

Of course, the discovery that Nightreign was a fast-paced multiplayer-focused game built less on the gradual discovery of a massive world but instead on repeatable gameplay loops for teams of three players, I got a little skeptical.

I'm pretty much the only one I know who actually likes these games, and while I'm very happy to write my blog posts and watch hours upon hours of lore analysis videos on YouTube, I've never been someone who loves playing with people I've met online (the exception being the World of Warcraft guild I'm still technically in, but doesn't have enough active players to do any real organized content anymore).

I'm also not even sure to what degree I need to care about the lore of Nightreign, as it appears to be kind of extra-canonical, or rather, has a separate lore canon from the base Elden Ring game. Which means that its label as an Elden Ring game appears to be a mix of branding and an opportunity to re-use assets (which From already did in Elden Ring, re-using plenty of Dark Souls stuff).

Anyway, I don't mean to be the grumpy old man on a porch, and perhaps some people are really enjoying the game (though critics seem to be quite mixed - I've seen 9/10s and 7/10s and maybe even a 6/10). But it does mean that I've got to just sit down and pass on this one while I wait to see what comes out of FromSoft next.

I'd be excited for The Duskbloods, but this appears to also be a multiplayer game. (And I assume not in the way that technically all the Souls-likes have been.)

Oh well.

What Am I To Do With the Multiplayer-Ficaiton of Favorite Games?

 This year, two games are coming out that I have very mixed feelings about.

One, coming quite imminently, is Elden Ring: Nightreign. The other is FBC FIrebreak.

Both are quasi-sequels to single-player games that I've utterly adored, namely Elden Ring and Control, respectively (yes, Elden Ring, like other Soulslikes, has always had multiplayer elements, but you can easily ignore them).

Both games are made by studios that I have enormous respect for.

And so, I find myself in this weird place:

Personally, I have never liked competitive multiplayer in games. And neither of these are. In fact, even while Nightreign is still a 3rd-person action-RPG and Firebreak is a first-person-shooter, both have similar structures, sending you on shorter endeavors in a team of three players.

I'll be honest, though, I haven't actually been following either game as closely as I would be if these were more straightforward follow-ups. Remedy has already announced Control 2, which will likely take a similar form to the original game, and FromSoft has assured their fans/audience/customers that the studio is still committed to making single-player offerings.

So what I am then left wondering is whether I should play these games or not?

See, despite the fact that my family has always gotten Apple computers (back in the mid 90s, this was a bolder stance than it is now) I'm sort of philosophically against the idea of brand loyalty. Star Wars was a big deal to me as a kid, but I find that there's a certain "fandom" culture online that tolerates no criticism, claiming you can't be a fan of something unless you like every last thing released under its banner (to be clear, there's also a ton of toxicity on the negative side of things that is arguably more prevalent). The older I get, the more I become aware of how branding and marketing tries to shift our brains to grow a kind of dependency on the familiar.

And it's tricky, because on one side, I think that these studios in particular are places where art is created - and I don't think there's anything wrong with having favorite artists. But there's also a powerful economic incentive to take advantage of those familiar stories, or in corporate jargon, those "IPs," (standing for "intellectual properties") in order to get people to buy into something that they might not be as inclined to try if it weren't for the familiarity with that brand.

I guess in both these cases, I really don't have a sense of whether the creative people in these studios had a brilliant idea for a multiplayer game, or if some corporate suit who couldn't care less about how fun a game is just read some data that suggests that this kind of ongoing live-service multiplayer game brings in big bucks, and that they need to get on that bandwagon.

Now, of course, it's funny, because in 1999, I played Super Smash Bros. for the first time, and it, along with particularly its two-year-later, much-higher-budget (I assume) sequel of Smash Bros. Melee, became one of my favorite games, despite the fact that there's no real like, story-progression. I'd play against bots far more than against my friends. So, maybe I'll find a lot of fun in the gameplay loop of these games as well.

I guess this all just boils down to my hemming and hawing about whether I'm going to play these games or not. And the answer is... Maybe?